


Monster

by jujubiest



Series: SPN One-Shots [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Mark of Cain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-03-13 11:14:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3379466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing that’ll break Castiel if he thinks about it too much is that Claire was right: Dean Winchester is a monster. But he wasn't always, and Cas remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monster

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for end of season 9/season 10.

The thing that’ll break Castiel if he thinks about it too much is that Claire was right: Dean Winchester is a monster.

But he wasn’t always, and Cas can’t help it: he remembers the boy who pulled his brother from a fire, the man who just wanted to protect his family and maybe save the world a little bit. The man who fought tooth and nail against Heaven and Hell, and the will of God himself, and all odds of his own survival to spare everyone in the world who would have perished if he had just accepted his destiny and allowed Lucifer and Michael to do battle as it was foretold.

Nothing, not the promise of safety, wealth, peace, paradise…nothing could convince him that it would be worth that price. Not even the life of his brother, the person he loved more than life itself.

Cas remembers the Dean Winchester he fell for in every way imaginable, the shining soul he dragged up out of Hell, the most perfect example of the flawed beauty that is humanity, love and fear and will and grit and avarice all bound together with flesh and blood, and lit from the inside with something that burns hotter than Grace, yet somehow whole in spite of all those contradictions.

And he remembers how the machinations of destiny and the weight of familial duty wore on him, drove him to the ground with their weight and twisted him toward darkness. He remembers feeling hollows of despair in the fabric of that bright soul long before he encountered the worst his life would offer him, wounds not even an angel could heal.

And so it doesn’t matter to him that now Dean’s eyes are lurking black behind the green, or that the mark of the father of murder shines red and angry on his arm. It doesn’t matter that Dean Winchester might possibly become the worst monster they’ve ever faced, because before he was a monster he was a hero, a righteous man…Castiel’s savior in so many ways, and Cas can’t give up on that person.

And he knows when the day comes, as it seems now it eventually must, that he and Dean stand on opposite sides of the battlefield, he will present his chest for Dean’s blade before he will bring himself to raise his hand to smite his friend. He knows this is selfish, and wrong, and once he would have been strong enough to do what is necessary. He is not that strong anymore.


End file.
